Happy New Year 2015!

Happy New Year to all from myself, Lulu, and everyone here at Spicy Horse in Shanghai.

Two bits to update you on today: Art Book production and Scoring for the animations.

First up, here's Lulu with images of the Alice: Otherlands Art Book (test print):

Alice vs. Akaneiro

Cover Page

Credits

Otherlands

The Others

The book featured in these images is a TEST PRINT which I'm using to understand the quality and capabilities of one of the book makers we may work with. It's also a guide for my reference, as I am personally creating the Illustrator files that will be used for printing the book - and this is my first foray into book making!

Probably not the final cover. Definitely not the final color (red) for the interior pages. Not the final credits list. In fact, none of the text you see is final. Again, it's a test print!

As you can see in the first image (with Lulu for scale) the Otherlands book is slightly larger than the Art of Akaneiro book. Close inspection reveals similar quality, though there are some issues with the cover printing method on the Otherlands book. In the end, I hope to match the quality of the Akaneiro (and Alice: Madness Returns) books produced by Dark Horse. The test print is certainly not to that level of quality, but it's not far off.

Actual design work on the book is about 1/5th complete. I've been waiting on the test print to go any further - and it took quite a while to find a factory we could work with on a limited edition print (and at a good price point + high level of quality). Even if design work were finished tomorrow, printing wouldn't start/finish until after Chinese New Year (mid-February). With that in mind, I think we can expect to have finished books by mid/late March. This should align with delivery of finished animations and production of DVDs.

Up next... MUSIC!

Walter, Ed, and Troy are working together on the scoring process. Today, I'm able to share with you the *work in progress* musical tracks from Walter that will accompany the animations.

When listening, keep in mind that these tracks are matched to the animations being produced by Troy and Ed. I've seen music + the rough cuts of the animations and everything fits together nicely. Final result should be great.

To hear more from Walter Sickert and The Army of Toys, follow this LINK.

Further updates...

Ed writes to update us on progress with his team: "My team is getting pretty close to the version I find acceptable (meaning that I can take their assets and pull a caffeine-fueled weekend, giving it my AMR atmospheric touch). I think they will have it on the next round. I will find out by the end of the day when that next/hopefully last delivery will be."

Troy says: "I'm waiting to hear the score that Edward comes up with so I can make some final edits. Once that's in place, I have quite a few shots to clean up and do final compositing. I'm also waiting to hear back from some compositors that can work within a very small budget. I'll have a better idea of a timeline when the score's done."

Lulu says: "TOY? DID YOU SAY TOY? WHERE IS TOY?!?!" No, Lulu, we said "Troy." Calm your paws.

Negotiations on the feature film front have gone silent. There's no 'next move' until our writer is once again free to engage, which won't happen until May. At that point I am hopeful we'll be able to get the feature film talks restarted and actual writing can begin. Fingers crossed.

As always, if you have questions or are in dire need of a personal update, please message me directly here on Kickstarter. If you need to update your shipping address or contact details, please use BackerKit.